Most Washington voters want to move on from Biden, Trump: poll

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President Joe Biden technically isn’t on the Nov. 8 ballots. Neither is Donald Trump.

Yet both figures loom large as voters in Washington and across the nation decide key races that will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control Congress for the second half of Biden’s term.

The midterms are always in large part a referendum on the sitting president. But with Trump continuing to command loyalty from most Republicans, his influence is also at play.

A new statewide poll sponsored by The Seattle Times and partners finds large majorities of voters say they’d prefer to move on from both men. Just 26% of voters in the new WA Poll said they believe Biden should seek a second term in 2024. The exact same percentage wants Trump to run again.

Among Democrats, 50% said they want to see Biden run again, while 28% said he should not, and 21% were unsure. Just 9% of Republicans and 13% of independents backed another Biden run.

As for Trump, 60% of Republicans in the survey said he should run again, while 22% said he shouldn’t and 18% were not sure. Eight percent of Democrats and 13% of independents said he should run again.

The poll included responses from 719 registered voters contacted by SurveyUSA between Oct. 14 and 19, with a credibility interval of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

The WA Poll found Biden’s approval numbers are underwater in Washington, a state he carried with 58% of the vote two years ago.

Overall, 51% of those surveyed said they disapprove of Biden’s job performance, while 47% approve. Twice as many (36%) said they strongly disapprove compared with those who said they strongly approve (18%). Democrats overwhelmingly approve of Biden, while most Republicans and independents do not.

Ethan McConaghy of West Seattle was among those in the survey against another Trump run for the White House, and undecided about Biden.

I just don’t think that Trump was really fit for a presidency, just because he didn’t have a background in politics, and just arrogant and ignorant, in the way he goes about public relations, said McConaghy, a 27-year-old carpenter and Democrat .

As for Biden, McConaghy somewhat approved of his job performance so far, but has concerns that the president’s mental focus is fading with age. He mentioned an appearance last month when Biden mistakenly called out for an Indiana congresswoman who had died in an August car crash.

Biden, who will turn 80 in November, was the oldest US president ever to be inaugurated. He said earlier this month that he intends to seek a second term, although he has not made a formal decision, according to the Washington Post.

Trump, 76, was the oldest president to be inaugurated prior to Biden. Although facing multiple criminal and civil investigations, he said at a recent rally in Texas he “will probably have to” run again in 2024, while also falsely claiming that he had won in 2020.

John Meyer, 64, of Spokane, said he strongly disapproves of Biden for “everything that he has done since he took office.” He pointed to rising gas prices as a key contrast from when Trump was president.

“Oil prices have gone up. Everything else has gone up. He hasn’t done anything to turn that down,” said Meyer, a conservative Republican who said in the poll that he backs another run by Trump.

Meyer, who works for a security firm, also said he does not believe Biden was legitimately elected president.

Beth Quale, 69, who lives in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, strongly approves of the job Biden is doing and would back him running again.

“I think he’s just getting started with the job he’s trying to do,” said Quale, a semi-retired nurse who works part time as an administrator at a mental health organization. “I think we have the beginnings and people arent really going to feel a lot of the changes for a few years.”

Quale, who identified herself as an independent voter, pointed to the infrastructure and climate packages Biden shepherded through Congress despite a 50-50 split in the Senate. She hopes Democrats win seats in the midterms to enact lasting changes, including reinstating the child tax credit that expired in December.

Biden’s national approval rating hovers around 42%, according to polls tracked by FiveThirtyEight. That unpopularity has many election experts predicting Democrats will lose their majority in the US House, and maybe slide into the minority in the Senate.

The continued, outsized influence of Trump as a recently defeated president is abnormal, according to Margaret O’Mara, the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Chair of American History at the University of Washington.

“We have not seen a defeated president loom so large, although we have seen presidents publicly criticize their successors,” O’Mara said in an email. She pointed to Herbert Hoover, who spent the rest of the 1930s sharply criticizing Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal as socialist and un-American. “He continued to push a conservative, small-government message for the rest of his long lifetime (he died in 1964, at age 90) although he never seriously considered running for office again.”

Ken Alper, president of SurveyUSA, said in an email that Biden’s fairly low approval ratings, and fatigue from the Trump presidency plus their advanced ages “are contributing to this sense that, really, a lot of voters would prefer to see someone else.”

But, he added: “… none of that is to suggest that Democrats won’t rally around a Biden campaign or that Republicans won’t do the same with a Trump campaign.”

The WA Poll is sponsored by The Seattle Times, KING 5, the University of Washingtons Center for an Informed Public and Washington State Universitys Murrow College of Communication. Earlier released poll results focused on competitive races for US Senate and secretary of state, voter concerns about abortion and inflation, and the fragile state of US democracy.

The poll also asked whether Trump should be charged with a crime for taking documents, including classified material, to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home. The documents were seized by the FBI in an Aug. 8 search of the estate.

Overall, 54% of Washingtonians surveyed said Trump should be charged with a crime if he broke the law by possessing the documents. Twenty-two percent said he did nothing wrong, while 10% said it would be too dangerous to prosecute an ex-president even if he did commit a crime.

Eighty-three percent of Democrats and 48% of independents said Trump should be subject to potential criminal charges.

Among Republicans, 51% said Trump had done nothing wrong and just 23% said he should be charged if he committed a crime.

Meyer was among the Republicans who said Trump did nothing wrong, suggesting the FBI and the Justice Department are “trying to frame” the ex-president. “If you go to trial for that I believe hed be completely exonerated,” he said.

Quale said Trump should absolutely face charges.

“The problem, frankly, is that Trump is not in jail yet,” she said. “There are so many things Trump could get indicted for, its hard to keep track.”

Seattle Times staff reporter Mike Lindblom contributed to this report.

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